March 18, 2008

I always check on the children before I go to bed. I guess this comes from the same impulse that made me watch them breath when they were little. If we are being totally honest here, the truth is, I actually hung my head over the edge of my bed and into my son's bassinet when he was first born. I slept like that. You can tell right away that he was my first born. It wasn't too many nights before I gave up on trying to fit into the bassinet and brought him to bed with us.

So on my way to bed last night I checked in and found my daughter propped up and kind of put out with herself because she was still awake. She said, "I give myself T for Troll because I can't sleep." "You give yourself T for Troll? Well I give you A for Angel." She replied, "T for Troll. I'm not having bad dreams. I'm not feeling bad. I just can't sleep. A is for Average. Everyone knows this. Maybe I'm G for Godless." (?) "Well, I think you are A for Angel. Where are you getting all this about grades?" She said, "Oh, I listen. And I tarn up a bit from here and there."

Tarn up? Something only Godless Trolls can do, I guess. Maybe she gets I for Inventive. Or I get S for Sucker because, of course, she ended up in bed with us for the night. I count these moments and try to savor every second. She in our bed. My son holding tight for a hug. Either of them preferring to be home. Won't be long till they are so O for Out of here.

I'd have to get the Sucker grade too. Between my three, someone is always in my bed at night. I worry that I'll become one of those crazy empty-nesters when I'm left with just my husband to sleep with (poor guy). But the bigger they get, the less they need me. I'd be a fool to turn them down during the scarce few times when they do.

Baby Boy and I fell asleep together in my bed after his surgery last week. I hate that he had to have surgery, but sometimes it's the only time he'll let me get close enough to touch him. They grow up SO fast.

Past Report Cards:

‎"Today for Show and Tell, I've brought a tiny marvel of nature: a single snowflake. I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary boring molecule of water, just like every other one, when you bring it in the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I'll be leaving you drips and going outside." ~Bill Watterson (as Calvin)

"To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others." ~Jimmy Carter

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. ~Jacob Bronowski

"It cannot be overemphasized that no body of theory exists to accurately define the way children learn, or which learning is of most worth." ~John Gatto

"If a teacher tells me what to do, then what I've made is not really mine. Its the teacher's work done with my hands." ~Riley

"He'd fooled us. He'd been learning all along--we just hadn't been able to see it because it didn't follow from our "teaching." It came from doing, sharing, and observing, from osmotically absorbing what was around him. I recalled that he once said to Mark, who was giving him snowboard instruction, "Dad, would you stop trying to teach me and just let me learn?"

I ask you now, what is a school, but a house of rules and incentives?

"Moral skill is chipped away by an over-reliance on rules that deprives us of the opportunity to improvise and to learn from our improvisation. And moral will is deprived by an incessant appeal to incentives that destroy our desire to do the right thing. And without intending it, by appealing to rules and incentives, we are engaging a war on wisdom." ~Barry Schwartz

I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities.~Seymour Papert

Learning About Cows

"Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family" ~ Virginia Satir

"I've sometimes found the Waldorf-y idea that the children play out our internal conflicts to be helpful. I do find that the more at peace I am with myself, the more at peace the kids are. Maybe some kind of wavelength thing, maybe I respond differently, maybe something else entirely." ~ Mary Margaret O'Melia

I am a mother octopus. This is my cycle - take care of everyone, put my needs last, fall apart, put myself back together, repeat. As I struggle to break this cycle, I find that I'm having to ask myself some difficult questions. Who am I besides someone's mother? What are the things I like to do, read, make, ponder? Where is the balance between caring for others and caring for one's self? How much self interest is selfishness? What will I be when my children grow up - colorless blob or dynamic person? ~ Fourmother

Learning Outside "Play is a vital part of learning. It is the rich backdrop in which children make discoveries, test out theories, explore questions, refine understandings and apply their developing skills." ~Wendy Banning, education consultant

Murdering the Innocents

THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir - peremptorily Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. ~Dickens

Human beings differ profoundly in regard to the tendency to view their lives as a whole. To some it is natural to do so, and essential to happiness.... To others life is a series of detached incidents without directed movement and without unity. The habit of viewing life as a whole is an essential part of wisdom...and is one of the things which ought to be encouraged in education. Consistent purpose is not enough to make life happy, but it is almost an indispensable condition of a happy life. And consistent purpose embodies itself mainly in work. ~Bertrand Russell

There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge. ~Rodger Bacon

"Promise me you'll always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, if we are ever apart, I'll always be with you." ~Christopher Robin